November 2017

The first part of November Fran and I visited about my improved health. It had been a long time since I had fallen. I wasn't using my cane anymore and I felt great. He and I were going out to eat and going shopping together. The big day was when I walked Walmart just using a shopping cart for a crutch.
I had not walked a Walmart store for years and years. I had always used a power chair, much to the chagrin of other shoppers, or Fran pushed me in a wheelchair with an attached basket.
We discussed two reasons for my improved health, one being the medicine change and the other I was in remission. Both options were wonderful. The remission option I had gone through before and remission gave me false hope that I would always feel good. Medicine change was the option I was hoping for.
One day I went to my mother-in-law's house and she told me that she wanted to go to the doctor. I, of course, asked her what was wrong. She said she had hurt her wrist maneuvering her wheelchair into her bedroom.  I called my husband and the doctor. The doctor had an opening that afternoon and Fran inspected her floor and spotted a dip in the floor which made pulling herself in her wheelchair difficult.
I took Marie into her bedroom to help her change her clothes and sat down on her bed beside her and she laid her head on my shoulder and said, "I can't do it anymore." Tears choked me, but in a matter of fact voice I told her that she had three options; she could move in with us again, she could go to the nursing home to live, or I could take care of her in her home. Of course, the last option was the best for her and for Fran and I.
I told Marie that I would take care of her like she was my own mama. She softly smiled and said, "I'm not fussy, but I would like you to cook for me." That day was the beginning of the rest of my life as I knew it at that point. Marie was 102 years old and little did she know it, but she was going to fall in about two weeks time and in fact, go to the nursing home for rehab for her wrenched knee.
 She was knitting me a pair of slippers for Christmas the day that she fell. She wanted to stay up late that evening and needed the light on behind her chair. She turned wrong and fell over her wheelchair and that was that. She pulled the pin on her life line locket, the ambulance came and she decided she wanted to go to the emergency room to make sure her knee was not fractured. Her knee was not fractured, but her 102 year old muscles and tendons didn't stretch like they used to and the doctor decided she needed physical therapy to help her achieve the goal of going home again. That was the day before Thanksgiving.
Tomorrow I will tell you what Marie, Fran and I accomplished in the next two weeks.

Wet hair on a cold winter's morning at Marie's house.